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That seems unrealistic to me. We are on the brink of a depression and I think if we go over that brink it will take a decade to fully recover. I hope I am wrong.

From Wikipedia: "In most countries of the world, recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the U.S., recovery began in early 1933, but the U.S. did not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high of 25% in 1933."




I'm not sure exactly how good a measure GNP is of this, but for what it's worth the US GNP both absolute and per capita was slightly above its 2008 level by 2010, and has kept climbing ever since. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gnp-...

By contrast the UK still hasn't come close to recovering to the same level: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/gnp...

So maybe the US at least is in a better position than it was in the 1930's to recover on that measure?


How do the numbers work? You can see growth is positive in some years but the GNP is going down?


I agree, but at the same time, 2008 was not as bad as 1929 to begin with, though.


The great depression had numerous additional problems that do not exist right now, including a global tariff war that was far beyond anything that went on with the US and China.

The central bank was mostly incapable of doing anything during the great depression. Today the central bank can shove $100 billion into JP Morgan if it's about to tip over and do it in a matter of hours. The Fed can set up a national small business credit line to the tune of $2 trillion and do it in a week or two (in this case the logistics are far more difficult than the money).

The US had no social safety net at all in 1933. The US remarkably saw a decline in homelessness between 2004 and 2011, despite the great recession, due to the very successful housing first programs run by the Bush and Obama Administrations. The existence and expansion of food aid programs during the great recession helped to prevent large bread lines. The great depression had no such national effort, much less one that was rapid and effective.

If we absolutely needed to do it, we can shovel $12,000 into the pocket of every adult in the country over the coming year. $36,000 per family of four. It would have a brutal cost, something along the lines of $3 trillion for a year. We would have to force our borrowing costs lower by using the Fed to manipulate those rates low, so we can afford to deal with the long-term costs of all of this - but we can do it. The US can't afford to spend $20 trillion on this diaster, but it can spend $3 to $5 trillion (and there will be hell to pay after, in the form of interest costs and plausibly tax increases (I won't hold my breath for fiscal responsibility in DC)).

What we can't do, is allow this to happen again anytime soon, and that will require numerous large changes globally, including to international trade.


this is all self inflicted, we could go back to business today if we wanted to, unlike in the depression, many banks went down along with their account holders.

That's not to say we wont get there if we do nothing. If we are really going to do this grand experiment, we need a big stimulus to offset it. especially for small businesses. So many restaurant and bar owners will not be able to handle this. Unlike Jim Cramer who says 'we dont need to help the rich', many of restaurants and bar owners have no other source of income and lots of debt, thus will become insolvent fast and there will be no jobs to go back to if we do nothing.




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